Things to Do in Everett This Weekend: Coho Derby & Glass Pumpkins

What does it say about a place when the same two days can hold the largest fishing derby on the West Coast and a gallery floor covered in more than a thousand hand-blown glass pumpkins?

This Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27, the derby and exhibition both close out, with the derby's weigh-ins in Everett and Edmonds. The derby’s Everett weigh-in happens at Harbor Marine on the working waterfront, where anglers in waders line up before sunrise with coolers and Catch Record Cards. The exhibition happens a short drive away at the Schack Art Center downtown, where a month-long exhibition called Schacktoberfest wraps up with a glass pumpkin patch that has been sitting under gallery lights since the first week of September. Neither event was scheduled around the other. Neither organization coordinated with the other. They just both happen to land on the same closing weekend, and if you live here, that overlap is worth noticing, because it says something true about this town that a restaurant opening or a new brewery never quite captures.

Two calendars that don't talk to each other

The Everett Coho Derby runs on fish, not on a marketing calendar. As The Everett Post reported, coho salmon return to Puget Sound rivers on their own schedule, typically moving from August into December, with the fall run usually peaking in September and October. The derby weekend falls during the typical fall coho run in Possession Sound and the Snohomish River system, and this year the fish were arriving earlier than usual. Anglers were seeing strong numbers a couple of weeks before Labor Day, well ahead of the club's normal expectations. A recent creel check by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife counted 854 coho landed among 189 boats and 558 anglers at the Everett Ramp alone. State biologists are calling this one of the strongest forecasted coho returns to Puget Sound in recent memory.

Schacktoberfest runs on an entirely different clock. The Schack Art Center builds its harvest exhibition into the same September slot every year, independent of tides or fish counts. The 2026 show opened September 3 and closes September 27, the same Sunday the derby wraps its final weigh-in.

Neither institution is thinking about the other's calendar. The Everett Post reported that a handful of tackle shop owners and sportsmen's clubs organized the derby in 1993, when the state closed most local salmon fishing to protect threatened runs and left only a small stretch of open water near the mouth of the Snohomish River. The Schack has been building its glass and fine-craft identity since long before that, and Schacktoberfest itself dates back to at least 2011. These are two institutions with completely separate histories that happen to share a closing date this particular year. That coincidence is the whole story.

What you're actually walking into at the marina

The derby is bigger than most people who haven't fished it realize. Organizers describe it as the largest fishing derby on the West Coast by number of participants, and the numbers back that up: it now averages around 2,000 paid adult tickets and roughly 270 free youth entries every year, up from about 900 tickets sold when the derby was still finding its footing in the early 2000s.

Weigh-ins run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday, at Harbor Marine on West Marine View Drive and at the Port of Edmonds Marina. Anyone can walk up and watch for free. The prize structure is public and worth knowing if you want to understand what's at stake for the person standing next to you at the dock:

Entry is $30 for adults and free for kids 12 and under, and every youth angler gets a prize whether they land a fish or not. The awards ceremony happens Sunday around 2:30 p.m. at Everett Bayside Marine, with food trucks on hand.

The money behind those prizes does more than reward the biggest fish. Derby proceeds fund a hatchery program that raises roughly 60,000 coho smolt a year for release in the Skykomish River, along with carcass planting in the Pilchuck River and Snohomish system, trout stocking in local lakes, and scholarships that send kids to Youth Conservation Camp. The strong coho return anglers are seeing this fall is, in some small measurable way, the return on three decades of a fishing derby quietly funding fish enhancement work most ticket buyers never think about.

What you're walking into at the Schack

The Schack Art Center sits at 2921 Hoyt Avenue downtown, and Schacktoberfest turns its main gallery into a genuine harvest installation rather than a themed sale. The glass pumpkin patch alone holds more than a thousand hand-blown pumpkins, arranged across the gallery floor for viewing throughout the run. Alongside it, the show features work from more than a hundred regional artists, a silent auction in the mezzanine gallery built from donated pieces, and ongoing "Make It Now" sessions in the hot shop, where visitors can work with a glassblower to make their own pumpkin in about twenty minutes.

Later in the run, the Schack hosts Pints + Pumpkins, a 21-and-over evening that turns the same gallery into a harvest party with live music, raffles, glassblowing demonstrations, and a costume contest. The Schack itself calls it the best night of the whole festival, so if that sounds like your kind of evening, check the Schack's site for the exact date and ticket window rather than assuming it lines up with a specific weekend.

Doing both without burning the whole weekend

The geography actually cooperates here. Harbor Marine and the Schack are close enough that a resident could reasonably build a single Saturday around both.

• Arrive at Harbor Marine before 10 a.m. to catch the first weigh-ins, when the line is longest and the mood is loudest.
• Grab breakfast nearby. Waterfront Place has filled in considerably over the past year, with The Net Shed Fresh Fish Market a short walk from the marina if you want something seafood-forward, or Tapped Public House if you'd rather sit on Snohomish County's largest open-air rooftop deck and watch boats come in.
• Head downtown by early afternoon. The Schack keeps regular gallery hours through the final weekend of Schacktoberfest, and the glass pumpkin patch is free to view.
• If you're around Sunday, the derby's awards ceremony at 2:30 p.m. at Everett Bayside Marine is worth catching even if you didn't fish, since it's where the $10,000 winner actually gets announced.

Neither event requires the other to make sense. But doing both in the same 48 hours gives you a version of Everett that a single restaurant guide or single festival writeup never quite delivers.

Why the coincidence matters more than either event alone

It would be easy to write two separate posts here, one about a fishing derby and one about an art show, and call it a full picture of fall in Everett. That would miss the actual point. The interesting thing isn't that Everett has a fishing derby or that it has a serious glass art center. Plenty of towns have one or the other. The interesting thing is that both operate at full scale, independently, without either one crowding out the other, and this year they happen to land on the exact same closing weekend without either institution planning it that way.

That's a pattern worth paying attention to if you've lived here a while and think you already know what Everett is. The waterfront that hosts a $10,000 salmon derby also hosts a rooftop deck at Tapped Public House and a taco counter at Marina Azul, a short walk from where anglers are hauling coolers off their boats. The downtown that hosts a hundred-artist harvest show also keeps a farmers market running every Sunday through the end of October. None of these things were built to complement each other. They just coexist, at the same time, in a city small enough that you can walk between them.

If you're weighing whether Everett is the kind of place where you'd actually want to spend your Saturdays, this is closer to the real answer than a median home price ever will be.

If you're thinking about what a move to this waterfront actually looks like, from the neighborhoods near the marina to the ones a few minutes from downtown, Dani Robinett has spent more than a decade learning which streets put you closest to weekends like this one. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk specifics.